12 AN HISTORICAL DISQUISITION

SECT. gave of the populousness, fertility, and high culti-I. vation of that region of India through which hiscourse lay, rendered Darius impatient to becomemaster of a country so valuable. This he soonaccomplished; and though his conquests in Indiaseem not to have extended beyond the districtwatered by the Indus, we are led to form a highidea of its opulence, as well as of the numberof its inhabitants, in ancient times, when welearn, that the tribute which he levied from it,was near a third part of the whole revenue of thePersian monarchy I7 . But neither this voyage ofScylax, nor the conquests of Darius, to which itgave rife, diffused any general knowledge of India.The Greeks , who were the only enlightenedpeople at that time in Europe, paid but littleattention to the transactions of the people whomthey considered as Barbarians, especially in coun-tries far remote from their own; and Scylax had^embellished the narrative of his voyage with somany circumstances, manifestly fabulous 1 *, thathe seems to have met with the just punishment, towhich persons who have a notorious propensityto what is marvellous, are often subjected, of beinglistened to with distrust, even when they relatewhat is exactly true.

About a hundred and sixty years after the reignof Darius Hystaspes, Alexander the Great under-

17 Herod. lib. iii. c. 90—96. See NOTE III.

Philoltr. Vita Apoll. lib. iii. c. 47. and Note jd ofOlearius Tzetzet. Chiliad, vii. versi 6;c>.